Mala Katz

Testimony of Mala Katz, born in Klimontow, Poland, 1927, regarding her experiences in Klimontow, Skarzysko Kamienna, Leipzig and a death march Traditional home; her family earns a livelihood from small trade; attends a Jewish school and a Polish school; contacts with the Polish population; Klimontow's population had a Jewish majority and included Poles and ethnic Germans, Volksdeutsche. German occupation, September 1939; forced contributions; arrival to her family's home of relatives from the large cities; hunger; harassment of Jews by Poles and Volksdeutsche; help from the Polish landlady; execution of Jews on the streets by Germans; assembly of the Jews in the center of the city and their deportation in trucks; deportation to Skarzysko Kamienna with her female cousins; receives help from a Polish foreman and a Polish female laborer who transfer letters to the witness' mother; knits sweaters and sells them in exchange for food with help from Poles; labor weighing poisonous chemical material; accidents during labor when the material catches on fire and burns the laborers; testing of weapons on inmates; rumors concerning what is happening at the front; escape attempt by inmates which results in their death; transfer to Leipzig in freight trains and labor in a weapons factory; death march, April 1945; receives help from a woman friend; liberation by the Red Army near the Elbe River. Return to Klimontow; crosses the border to Italy illegally disguised as a Greek woman; aliya attempt to Eretz Israel on the "Enzo Sereni" ship, 1946; detention in Atlit; life on Kibbutz Gesher.